Compliance

Compliance is at the heart of everything we do. We make sure it is built in to all of of our processes to ensure adherence to all relevant regulations and guidelines to protect our clients and others who deal with us.

In order to measure continued awareness and understanding of current relevant compliance issues, we carry out stringent and structured audits of everyone who deals with the public and all our people are required to take and pass our annual compliance test. To support this, all telephone calls are recorded.

We are regulated by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and the principles of the OFT Debt Collection Guidance are incorporated into our business activities and processes. The Treating Customers Fairly principles are also central to what we do. We are keen supporters of the free advice sector, such as the Money Advice Trust, the Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) and Christians Against Poverty, as we believe that individuals should be able to receive free advice if they are experiencing financial difficulties. We were the first debt collection agency to establish a specialist unit dedicated to dealing with the free advice sector and to provide assistance to more vulnerable individuals.

Throughout our business process, the interests of our clients and individuals are protected at all times. We comply with Ofcom requirements on predictive dialling when making outbound calls and PCI DSS to ensure adherence to regulations governing the security of credit card data.

We have a specialist legal team available to offer assistance to our clients on compliance matters. This is led by Sara de Tute, our Legal and Compliance Director, who is also President of the Credit Services Association, with responsibility for compliance within the industry.

As a result of our involvement with the Credit Services Association we are proud to be at the forefront in helping to shape what is already a heavily-regulated industry, by ensuring we respond to consultation papers, attend meetings with regulators and lobbying government ministers and MPs.